Homeless advocates criticize council for inaction on housing
PALO ALTO >> Despite catching heat from some advocates who said it’s not moving fast enough to stem a homelessness crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the Palo Alto City Council remained noncommittal Monday on any unified course of action.
During a study session scheduled to discuss ways to house more than 300 homeless people in the city, council members listened to Santa Clara County housing advocates clamor for Palo Alto to do more.
They pointed out the city doesn’t have a permanent 24-hour homeless shelter, hasn’t yet launched a safe parking program for people who live in their vehicles and hasn’t aggressively pursued county and state funds to convert struggling hotels to temporary housing like other neighboring cities have done
through Project Homekey.
Phillip Dah, director of the Palo Alto Opportunity Center, said he hopes the council moves quickly to catch up for lost time.
Dah lamented that the only shelter for homeless adults — Hotel de Zink — has had to reduce its 20bed capacity to 10 because of pandemic social distancing rules and asked the council to seek other temporary shelters for people.
“Even though emergency shelters are useful, we think that if we move to getting more permanent housing it will really address the systemic homelessness issues in Palo Alto,” Dah said.
For people sleeping in their vehicles — many of them parked alongside busy roads such as El Camino Real — the situation isn’t much better. The city has been debating and attempting to create a safe parking program since 2019, but still hasn’t delivered. Officials said there’s room for about 12 vehicles at a site on Geng Road near the bay and about four each at three potential church parking lots.
Meanwhile, neighboring Mountain View has created 78 safe parking spots for vehicle dwellers and may soon expand that to 103. Mountain View has also been pursuing partnerships with county officials to purchase the Crestview Hotel for redevelopment into temporary housing.
Former council candidate Rebecca Eisenberg called Palo Alto’s strategy for dealing with its homeless population “embarrassing and shameful.”
“Yes, it is true that the county has made a lot of progress,” Eisenberg said. “But Palo Alto has made zero progress. They talk about Santa Clara County, but the public needs to know that Palo Alto is alone in offering zero shelter beds, as contrasted with Mountain View, which has half our budget and are able to do it.”
But some community members like Wendy Yu cautioned against rushing to build more shelters or offer more safe parking.
“It is going to be a risk that we are going to take that’s not going to be solving the existing unhoused issue,” Yu said. “We may have more (homeless people) coming into our city.”
Yu also warned that the safe parking lots will cluster near faith communities along Middlefield Road, essentially “concentrating” the homeless into particular neighborhoods. Others who are wary of the safe parking program asked that the lots be monitored 24/7, that the unhoused residents who participate be required to pass a background check and that a $600 fee to appeal the establishment of a safe parking program in a neighborhood be lowered.
Council members debated whether to expedite the establishment of a safe parking program. Councilwoman Lydia Kou said the council has to listen to residents who have raised
concerns about safety and quality of life being potentially disrupted.
“It’s mostly reassurance that they’re looking for,” Kou said. “They want to know that if we’re going to have a lot of these programs that their comments should be looked at and worked on.”
Councilman Greg Tanaka agreed that the appeal fee is “prohibitively expensive,” but he did not offer any particular strategy.
“I don’t know why we have to charge such a high fee,” he said. “We don’t want that to be a barrier to feedback on the safe parking program.”
Mayor Tom DuBois, Vice Mayor Pat Burt, Councilman Greer Stone and Councilwoman Alison Cormack said it’s time to take some concrete steps forward.
Stone said for a long time it has “broken my heart that we don’t have shelter options for everyone or permanent settlers for families” and called on the council to create a “strategic plan” and give
more money to human services.
“I’m disappointed with the amount of money we spend on human services,” Stone said. “It’s only a little more than $500,000. That’s comparable to one of our consent agenda items. It’s basically the cost of installing one bathroom in Palo Alto. It wouldn’t take much to significantly increase our commitment.”
Burt said he wants to use COVID-19 relief money to retain essential social services and build emergency facilities.
“It’s entirely appropriate for us to take some fraction of that spread over a twoyear period and put it toward our social services funding,” Burt said, adding that getting permanent structures to house people is key.
He mentioned two sites that could be used for temporary housing — the four-acre former Los Altos Hills wastewater treatment plant property and a 10-acre patch near the golf course that was once to be developed as playing fields but has remained empty.
“If the city has the land and can make it available, my understanding is that then we would be on a fast track to access county funds,” Burt said.
DuBois said the city will likely have to expand the planned safe parking program. He noted that Mountain View’s ban of oversized vehicles parked on most city streets will “impact surrounding cities.”
He said that in addition to using public lots, the city should ask companies to provide their large, currently empty lots for safe parking while their employees continue to work from home.
He’d also like to explore hotel conversions.
“We’re being careful, but I hope we can streamline,” DuBois said. “There’s a lot of county money for hotel conversions. I’m sure rundown hotels will be interested in being sold and working with the county to purchase them and get emergency shelter and maybe later affordable housing. Given the scale of the problem, it’s up to us to see what we can do.”